DIY Easter Egg Decorating Ideas – Frugal, Fun or Fail?

Instead of using the usual Paas Egg Dye kit this year, I thought it might be fun to try some creative and inexpensive Pinterest egg dyeing recipes. I got the kids involved and we tried 5 different ways to decorate eggs.

Are Pinterest Egg Decorating Recipes all they’re cracked up to be?

1. Shaving cream egg dye. This idea looked great to me – shaving cream is cheap (and we already had some on hand) and my kids love the smell and feel of it. For this recipe, from Chef Kathie, all you need to do is line a cookie sheet (I used a pie plate) with shaving cream, add drops of neon food coloring, and stir with toothpicks. The photo shows a stunning tie-dye effect. I think my kids got a little carried away with their stirring, however, because the colors blended together. When they wiped off the shaving cream, the effect was watered down and bleh.

2. Cool Whip egg dye. This idea, from Tot School, is similar to the shaving cream eye dye method, only it uses Cool Whip. Once the eggs are coated in the colored Cool Whip, the instructions call for you to “put the eggs in the fridge and allow them to sit undisturbed for about 8-12 hours.” I don’t know about your kids, but mine are much more interested in short-term gratification… before I knew it, they had wiped the Cool Whip off after just a few minutes. Here are our results:

Kool-Aid egg dye. This is so much better smelling than the vinegar-and-dye Paas egg dyeing method! That being said, the kids wanted to drink the mixture and I had to dissuade them because I’d used one tiny pack in 2/3 cup of water and I’m not even sure it was sweetened. This idea, from Fabulously Frugal, shows vibrantly colored eggs. I bought only one packet of grape Kool-Aid for this experiment, figuring purple is such a popular color. But… it turned out to be anything but eggcellent.

Sharpie tie-dye. What I liked about this idea was that it looked easy and we had all the ingredients in the house already. I found this idea on the Housing a Forest blog. All you need is some Sharpies, rubbing alcohol and an eye dropper (we used a straw) and eggs. Following the instructions, I had the kids draw on the eggs with colorful Sharpies, then we dripped small drops of rubbing alcohol onto the eggs. “The colors with mix, blend and drip leaving behind a beautiful pattern.” Only ours ended up looking more blobby than beautiful.

Melted crayon egg decorating. What could be easier? While the eggs are still hot, let your kids decorate them with crayons, which will melt on the eggshells as they color them. (I made sure the eggs were placed in oven mitts). The Jenna Burger Design blog features this “unique alternative idea” which turned out to be a FAIL for us. While her kids’ eggs are simply stunning, ours were pretty… ugly.

So this Easter, I think we’re going to be going back to the tried-and-true (if a bit dull) Paas kit. It’s only about 2 bucks and I know it’ll do the job. These experiments weren’t a complete bust, however – I wound up turning the “fails” into a pretty tasty egg salad!

I did try some alternative methods to dye eggs when I grew up, but their ‘successfully failed’ me every time. One many swear by is dyeing eggs using onion skins. They’re supposed to come out red, but that never happened whenever I tried it, so I decided to stick to the traditional store bought egg dye 😀